Digital Fortress by Dan Brown

When Dan Brown read Sidney Sheldon’s novel The Doomsday Conspiracy, he decided he could do better and it was Digital Fortress [DF] , his first novel.

**Spoiler ahead **

Susan Fletcher is Head Cryptographer of NSA (National Security Agency) and she receives emergency call from the Dy. Director of the operation, Commander Trevor Strathmore, who was like father to Susan.

Strathmore informed her about the emergency, TRANSLTR, a super toy of NSA able to decode toughest encrypted message within minutes, is not able to decrypt a code for more than fifteen hours. Strathmore explained that he had entered a code published by Ensei Tankado, who claims that the code is unbreakable as against the Bergofsky Principle, which states that every code is breakable. Only Tankado has pass-key to decrypt the code, he has decided to sell the unbreakable code to the highest bidder among the international computer companies.

However, TRANSLTR seems to be in endless loop, and Strathmore sends David Becker, a foreign languages expert and boyfriend of Susan, to Spain to recover the belongings of dead Tankado. Meanwhile Susan and Strathmore tries to figure out the problem.

When Phil Chartrukian , assistant System Security Division of Crypto, arrives at Crypto and believes that TRANSLTR has been attacked by a virus. Greg Hale, another Crypto of NSA also wonders why Susan and Starthmore are present on Saturday and smell the rate.

Here David find something missing from the personal belongings of Tankado and the chase begins to recover it as it contains the pass-key to decrypt the code of Tankado.
****

I find the story with too many co-incidents. Also the chase by David almost consume half of the story which becomes frustrating sometime. You left in wondering that NSA , budget of which runs in billions and which contains the most secured secrets of America appears to easy to breached. One could peep into another’s room, and one can access to the Dy. Director’s email account.

I find hard to believe that at the NSA, building of which is spread in two millions square feet and have staff of twenty six thousand, nobdy turnsup when their ultimate machine is at fire.

Having read all the novels of Dan Brown it appears that the author makes a very good head start , explaining everything necessary to understand the novel, and also state that the state-of-art technology developed and controlled by the American secret agencies, but somehow initial excitement created by the fact and figures fads away as the story progresses.

Dont regret If you haven’t read , because you will regret too after reading.

I liked a dialog of abusive Jabba , Anti-Hecker and System Security Chief of NSA …to conclude the review

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10 thoughts on “Digital Fortress by Dan Brown”

Out of his four novels, I read this last and hated it most. I think he spends too much time setting the premise and providing us with (useless) facts that it gets really dry (although one cannot deny it helps in understanding later on in the book).

I wasn’t too impressed with Digital Fortress, either. There are glaring gaps in the plot, the “superintelligent” people in it behave amazingly stupid, and I completely agree that the way security at NSA is described is laughable.
And why is Spain described as some kind of caricature of a third world banana republic (although I suspect that most actual third world banana republics have rather higher standards of sanitation, health care and telephone services than Dan Brown credits Seville with)? Dan Brown is supposed to have lived in Seville for a year – it must have been an awfully long time ago…